The Pulled Pork Prescription

I came down with a nasty head cold this weekend. It started Thursday night with a sore throat and by Friday night I was fully within its grips. I kept waking up throughout the night with the distinct impression that I was suffocating. Bleh, head colds. I decided to give up the farce of restful sleep early Saturday morning. I was awake and miserable and it was early. Early enough that the sun had just come up and it was still cool outside, like 70 degrees cool. I decided to try and capitalize on my misfortune by going ahead with my grill project for the weekend – pulled pork.

I knew the pork was going to need to cook for a long time, so why not take advantage of being up early to start the cook off early. Perhaps my loss (of sleep) could be Dawn’s gain (of porky goodness ).

This was going to be my second attempt at pulled pork. My first had been at Jeff’s party. There I had been following a Hawaiian recipe. The texture had been impressive for a five hour cook, but the flavor was pretty muted. I decided to do away with the aluminum foil and banana leaves for my second attempt. I wanted the smoke to get into the meat.

I prepped the Boston pork butt by scoring it a bit and giving it a spice dry rub. I just used a pre-made spice rub out of the cabinet. I then prepped my stoker grill temperature controller for its inaugural run. Setup was easier than I had anticipated. The wireless network extenders worked like a charm and my grill was online within minutes.

To my great shame I hadn’t tried out the fancy data logging software I found for the Stoker ahead of time. When I tried to launch it there were problems and I didn’t want to sit there and try and troubleshoot it while I had a fire starting in my grill. Must not jeopardize my first cook with the Stoker for some software I found on the internet. I’ll have to play with it later when there isn’t a pork butt at stake. I was able to configure the Stoker via a web browser so I didn’t have to resort to setting it using the actual buttons on the device. I mean, how plebian would that had been.

The Stoker functioned beautifully. I let the pork butt cook and smoke at 225 degree for 12 hours and didn’t have to adjust the grill a single time.

Eventually I pull the pork off the grill and brought it inside the house to rest. When I checked the grill for charcoal there was a surprising amount still left. I think I could do an uninterrupted cook at that temperature for 24-36 hours.

It was at this point that the full effect of my head cold really hit me. As the pork butt rested Dawn made guttural sounds of wretched anguish. I asked her what was wrong and she proclaimed it was the heavenly aroma that was filling the house….and the fact she was not allowed to grab the meat in her jaws and shake vigorously….just yet. I couldn’t smell a thing. I actually felt pretty devastated at this point. If I couldn’t smell this talisman of meaty goodness while standing right over it, and Dawn could sent it from across the house that meant I wasn’t working with a significantly impaired palate. I wasn’t going to be able to accurately taste my creation to compare it again my first pulled pork attempt. However, even with a muted palate I was able to detect some notion of smoked meat which was completely absent in my first attempt. So the second attempt was a success….I think.